ISBN ? (UK hbk),,, 0-586-08143-7 (UK pbk)

"The subject of this pioneering survey is a spectre that haunted Europe in the 18th and early 19th centuries, the bogy of the revolutionary conspiracy of the secret societies. J.M.Roberts throws a penetrating light on a murky area of shifting and proliferating alliances between evanescent and shadowy organizations, and plots the legendary careers of many of the conspirators who became the demon kings of revolutionary Europe. This examination of the collective nightmare of a particular culture, a nightmare that taps bogus but very deep and powerful fears, illuminates the role -- and the danger -- of myth in action." [jacket blurb, UK pbk, 1974]

"The most lucid available guide through the jungle of this ideological and political underworld: Masons of the Scottish Rite, of Strict Observance, Martinists, Illuminati, Rosicrucians, Carbonari, Decisi, Sublime Perfect Masters and the rest." --E.J.Hobsbaum (in The Guardian ).